Forum:Capitalization
This is probably really silly, but it's something I'd like to clear up. When I write articles for monsters I tend to refer to them in capitals, as if each name was a legal one (always saying Slimes and not slimes, Golems and not golems, Man o' Wars and not man o' wars is it men o' war?, etc, etc). In the games the monsters are just listed the same way you'd list animals: you don't say Sheep or Dogs, you say sheep or dogs. What I'm wondering here is if I should drop this habit and cease using capitalization where it is unneeded? The only exceptions I can see are with monsters that have names like Barbatos or Rashaverak, names that are, well, names, and only to ignore this if it is ignored in the game itself. Feedback on this matter would be appreciated, yo. --PantheonSasuke 06:41, March 2, 2010 (UTC) :I think you are correct in making a distinction between types of enemies. Some enemy names are the species of the enemy, others are proper names (For example: slime vs. Hargon). I think I fall more on the side of not capitalizing the species enemy names when they are plural as you described (slimes, golems). What are some examples in practice of needing to write out the plural form? I think I agree with the non-capitalization, but there might be exceptions to that in certain areas. Obviously, article names should always be capitalized, and for enemies each word should be (e.g. Liquid Metal Slime). Really, it's kinda a tough question. --Pagoda 17:05, March 2, 2010 (UTC) ::I don't believe that article titles should necessarily be capitalized as this makes linking articles in prose more difficult than necessary. The initial capital required by the software is ok, but later capitals must be preserved in links or they will go astray (eg. slime vs. slime knight). Anyway, unless I'm missing something, it would seem to me that liquid metal slime is a species and should not be capitalized (ie. the article should be titled Liquid metal slime). ::For reference, this is what Wikipedia's manual of style has to say on the topic. - Adan Aileron (talk) 14:51, March 3, 2010 (UTC) :Hmm, I guess that would be true if they are species. I think I've gotten into the mode of thinking that articles should be capitalized, but I agree with what Wikipedia's style is. In fact, in other list articles, I have followed it by capitalizing only the proper nouns (List of tempering materials in Dragon Quest Swords). That being said, Adan is right, it should be Liquid metal slime. The only exceptions would be enemies which are determined to be specific bosses such as Kandar or Balzack. :On a related topic, what about equipment articles? If a shop sells Leather Armor, which is spelled with 2 capital letters, should the article be titled Leather Armor? I understand that Leather Armor is armor in an equipment type sense, but technically the name used in-game includes the word Armor. --Pagoda 15:49, March 3, 2010 (UTC) ::I've been playing the pre-VIII games lately, so I wouldn't be able to give an accurate answer. If NPCs outside of the shop address equipment in lowercase then it could probably be said that they're capitalized in the shop to possibly look more stand-out. I wanna say that they'd be lowercase, too, from text I recall seeing from Joker, and going back to look at the game shows that lowercase is used in the inventory, at least when a weapon is made of two words. --PantheonSasuke 22:31, March 3, 2010 (UTC) To revisit this topic, I definitely think that equipment articles should be lowercase where possible. In other words, Leather armor would be the correct article title. To summarize the following article types should be lowercase except when they are proper nouns: * enemy articles * equipment articles * item articles I haven't gotten into spell articles too much yet, but I think they would be capitalized. For example, Hocus Pocus would be a correct title. This is because a spell is a singular entity and therefore a proper noun. As an example, you would say that each character learns the Hocus Pocus spell.--Pagoda 19:26, March 15, 2010 (UTC)